Denham said that not only did the party amass details about the candidates, it collected information about other people without their consent.

The privacy commissioner has now issued new guidelines around social media background checks and the NDP says it will have no problem abiding by them.

"As you know we reviewed but we didn't retain any information from candidates’ social media accounts," said the party’s NDP provincial secretary, Jan O'Brien. "And once the privacy commissioner brought her concerns to us, we stopped collecting social media passwords from candidates."

O'Brien said the NDP will continue working candidates to ensure they're held to a high standard.